I guess that this won't make much sense unless you know about Aikido, and Sensei, and Taiji, and me--even though this is really about Phil. You'll just have to be patient until I come to him. After all, for most of the years that I want to talk about I told people that my life was divided into three parts: "Work, Sleep, and Aikido." Even Phil had to put up with that. I usually felt silly when I tried to explain in any detail. I could gloss over my relationship with Sensei and Taiji--and I was very good at turning aside questions about Phil before they were asked--but I really wanted to explain "Aikido." It colored everything else.

Aikido is probably the most esoteric martial art whose name is in an English language dictionary. It is not easy to explain what Aikido is. It's even harder to explain why I have given so much to studying it. Most of the things we do reflect who we are, and Aikido doesn't fit the picture that most people have of me. If I were a jock, I would grunt and leave it at that. If I led a violent life, I would just say that I wanted to know how to kill. But the only fight I ever had occurred when I was 13 years old. It ended when my opponent sprained his hand by bouncing a fist too hard against my skull. As with some other things in my life, the easy explanations aren't honest.

I will try to be honest as I write this. The hardest thing is to not reinvent the person I was. Sometimes I was stupid, immature, and not very nice. I would like to pretend that I was otherwise, but I've had some hard lessons about pretending.

The best way I can think of to keep myself honest is to use things that I wrote at the times I want to tell you about. There are people who pass through my letters and diaries who belong in other stories and if this were fiction I would write them out of this one. Since it's not fiction, I can only as for you indulgence. Read this as true if you can, but be careful about reading it strictly as fact. I will probably reinvent myself anyway.

So let me start with Aikido, and let me start with a letter to my parents where I tried to explain Aikido--what I knew about it then--to them.

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